


call them brothers

by engmaresh



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Justice League - All Media Types, Justice League Dark: Apokolips War
Genre: Angst, Batfamily (DCU), Canon Compliant, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Apocalypse, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:49:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24092365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/engmaresh/pseuds/engmaresh
Summary: Alone after the end of the world, Damian goes to Dick. But comfort is in short supply once you've fucked up raising your brother from the dead.(Spoilers for Justice League Dark: Apokolips War.)
Relationships: Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Comments: 24
Kudos: 194





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some warning notes: This fic address Dick's post Lazarus mindbreak. And Damian's head is not a nice place to be. He's not a nice kid.

“What is it?” he snaps irritably. Whatever it is, Damian doesn’t have time for it, not when he has to plan a defense of his compound from the parademons.

His footsoldier shuffles nervously, hesitant. It’s hard to believe that such a cowardly, undisciplined fool is still allowed to remain in the League’s ranks, but they are low on manpower. Every body counts in their defense.

“Don’t waste my time,” he snarls. “Report.”

“It’s t-the patient, my liege,” says the man with a cringing bow. “He refuses to eat. He has attacked the nurse--”

“Didn’t I assign guards to help him with the task?”

“Yes, yes, you did.” It’s almost painful to watch the man grovel, eyes downcast, wringing his hands like a useless old woman. “He has managed to overpower them. We barely managed to contain him.”

A growl rises from his chest. His hand moves to his sword of its own accord, closing so tight around the hilt the leather of his glove creaks. He could slay this man in an instant and free himself of this incompetence and pathetic snivelling. But pragmaticism forces him to stay his hand. Something deeper than that too, something he’s in no mood to address right now. Father would not do this. Dick would not do this. And they need every person they can get right.

“Get out of my sight!” he snarls, and is only slightly gratified by the way the man scurries away. It’s laughable, how far the League of Assassins has fallen, that they’re forced to take in weaklings and idiots to bolster their ranks, that their training has fallen so far by the wayside that they’ve started churning out trash like this.

He makes a note to speak to Lady Shiva. They need to up their training, improve their conditioning methods. If anyone is incapable of being a soldier, they’re to be demoted to servants. If they’re already servants...well they’re always in need of someone to scrub the outhouses, to scavenge for resources, to act as a decoy during their occasional forays to reclaim supplies and territory.

If useless idiots like that were to die, they might as well die for the sake of humanity.

He can hear Nightwing several corridors away from the cells. He’s throwing himself against the door from the sound of it. The growls and shouts that come from behind the locked door are more reminiscent of an animal’s than a human’s.

It galls him that he has to take a moment, a breath, that he needs to settle something in himself before he can slide back the panel and look. That the sight of his brother like this hurts him so.

But he deserves it, that gut punch feeling, that tightness in his throat. Nightwing died because of him, because when it came down to it, he was still the one too weak, too useless, the one who needed saving.

“Dick,” he calls softly into the cell. “It’s me, Damian.”

He doesn’t flinch when Dick lunges at the door, hissing and spitting like a rabid dog. He slides back the panel, and rests his head against the cold metal while he wipes the spittle from his face and weighs his options. He could have Dick tranquilized. By dart or by gas, they have the resources for both. Or he could go in there on his own, face his brother’s madness and hope that enough gets through to Dick to calm him, if only for a little while.

Damian sighs. He doesn’t understand why he always puts himself through this, gives himself this illusion of choice. There’s only one way he can do this.

“I’m coming in,” he warns, but doesn’t open the door just yet. He waits instead, for a minute and a half, listening to the faint shuffle of footsteps behind the door. Death has robbed Dick of the preternatural grace he had in life--now every step sounds like that of a mindless, lumbering beast. It’s what Damian has reduced him to.

When he reaches the end of his countdown he throws the door open. It slams into Dick, who yelps as he’s hurled back and bounces off the padded wall. Damian takes those few seconds to seal the door and throws himself on his brother, wrestling him into a chinlock. His arms are already trapped by the straightjacket, but it keeps his teeth away from Damian’s fingers and other parts of his body.

“Calm down, Grayson!” he snarls. “Get a hold of yourself.”

Dick bucks under him, tries to throw him off or roll them over so he can crush him. It might’ve worked before the pit. He’s still taller than Damian and broader, but pit madness has wasted away his muscles and his ruined mind holds no room for strategy. Damian sits on him as he flails and kicks and growls until he tires out.

“You done?” he asks when Dick finally goes still beneath him.

“I hate you,” Dick growls, and Damian’s heart lurches in his chest. On the rare occasions he manages human speech, “I hate you,” is all Dick manages, aside from screaming for Bruce or his mother.

“I hate you too,” Damian mutters. For several seconds, he risks relaxing his hold, just so he can rest his head against Dick’s back. He smells rank, and his hair is too long. They should probably sedate him again soon, give him a bath, clean him up. It wouldn’t do to let Dick become an animal in appearance too.

“I guess you’ll want an update on things, Grayson,” he speaks to the room. It’s quiet except for Dick’s heaving breathing. The padded floor, and the fact that Damian’s sitting on him give it a muffled quality, but when Dick gets that bath, Damian’ll push for a health checkup too. What’s the point of resurrecting his brother when he’s just going to end up dying of pneumonia?

“Fa--Batman remains one of Darkseid’s minions. You might be relieved--or sad, though I don’t know what you see in that trash heap--that Bludhaven has been wiped completely off the map. Gotham is no better off, my agents tell me it will fall in a matter of weeks.

“The cave--” he has to stop here to breathe, his chest tight. “It’s rubble. Pennyworth is gone. I don’t know what became of the Gordons.”

Dick doesn’t reply, just continues to breathe. He might even be sleeping; Damian doesn’t dare to check.

“You’re pathetic,” he whispers into the silent room. “You’re weak, you’re useless, you’re pathetic! First you had to die for me. I could have handled myself! You knew that! And then it turns out your mind is just so weak and fragile that you couldn’t even take coming back to life.”

He releases his chinhold on Dick, dragging his hands through his brother’s greasy, matted hair, fighting the urge to slam his brother’s head against the floor. Knock some sense into him, some sanity. 

“Do you know how many times my grandfather has died?” he finds himself screaming. “You can’t even handle one death! You and my father are both alike, both weak, incapable of making the hard decisions! If you loved me so much, why did you leave me here alone to make them? Why!”

Damn it, now he’s crying. He’s as pathetic as the both of them. It’s in his blood after all. Maybe his mother had been right to try rid herself of him. Being a Bat has made him soft, has made him weak, and now he has to relearn again all her lessons on guarding himself against all those things that make man easy prey. Attachment, dependence, hope. Why can’t he love the way she loved him, the way she loved his father, deeply, but without strings?

“I hate you,” he mutters into the darkness, where only Dick can hear him. “I hate you.”

“Duh-”

Damian’s breath catches in his throat. He leans forward, straining his ears to hear Dick’s voice.

“Duh-duh.” Dick sounds frustrated. Like his mind, after so long, has finally managed to grasp word only for his mouth to find its shape out of reach.

“Dam--”

“Damian,” Damian breathes. “It's me, Damian. Dick…”

“I hate you.”

Damian exhales sharply, closes his eyes. The bastard gave up. Of course he gave up. Trust Dick to take the easy way out every time, first death, then madness, and now he can’t even bother to acknowledge Damian’s existence.

He slumps back down against Dick’s back. He’s tired. And he still has to meet with Shiva over the problem with their soldiers again. They’re low on food. They need to scavenge metal for weapons. Fortify their defenses. There’s so much to do. Of course Dick would just lie down and give up. Sometimes the thought of doing the same is tempting.

Cautiously, Damian climbs to his feet, but all Dick does is curl into a ball, tucked against the wall, muttering nonsense to himself.

“I have to go now,” Damian tells the room. “Unlike you I don’t have time to laze around. I will have someone more competent come by to feed you later.”

He carefully locks the door behind him, and wipes away any traces that he’s been crying. Only Dick can know. And who will he tell anyway?


	2. coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coda to the end of the end of the world.

“Father,” Damian says, once they’ve stepped through the portal. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“It’s Dick,” his father says heavily. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Damian.” But there’s no reproach in his voice, no anger. Instead exhaustion, regret, and...relief? “What did you do?”

“You know what I did, father,” snaps Damian, and he can’t keep the anger from his voice. Of course, deep down inside, Bruce is glad that his favoured son still lives, that he’s not the one who had to make the terrible choice of bringing him back. And Damian knows Bruce would have brought Dick back.

But he remembers his training and discipline, and tamps down that anger. This isn’t about Bruce, or even himself. It’s about Dick, and how Damian has failed him, again and again.

“He’s not--”

“Pit madness,” interrupts his father. “He never…?”

“I don’t know why,” says Damian bitterly, unable to meet his father’s eyes. Not that Bruce has once tried to remove his cowl since he was freed from Darkseid’s influence. Damian’s not entirely sure he can. He’s afraid to ask. “I tried everything.”

“I understand,” says Bruce, and Damian wishes he didn’t. He doesn’t know what to make of this man his father now is--if he’s even still a man. Who knows how Darkseid has managed to slave him to his computers and machines. But Damian can still feel the sharp fire of the blade in his thigh, the feeling of his bones breaking under Batman’s fists, and he can’t help but think that father might have fought harder for Dick. A better son, a wanted son.

“Damian--”

“I’m fine, Father,” he says, trying to shake off Bruce's heavy hand but failing. Maybe he’s just not trying hard enough. 

“You died.”

“I hardly noticed.”

He regrets the words immediately when his father’s hand spasms on his shoulder, finger digging in painfully even through the heavy armour.

“But I did,” his father says slowly. “I’m so--”

“It wasn’t you,” says Damian quickly, trying to hold off the words he’s afraid to hear. He doesn’t want to know. Batman doesn’t do regrets and apologies, and neither do Al Ghuls. Failure exists to be analyzed, learned from and moved past. There is no room for sentiment or guilt. Besides, after so many years of being Darkseid’s mouthpiece, how can anything that comes out of Batman’s mouth now be true? And it would be a deep irony if two years of speaking another’s words has finally loosened Bruce Wayne’s tongue.

It takes Damian a moment to realize they’ve stopped walking, the others slowly limping on ahead. 

“We should catch up,” he says, but Batman shakes his head.

“One moment,” he says, and if that isn’t uncharacteristic enough, Damian thinks he can hear his father swallow. Swallow, like a human man, afraid to speak. To his shame, he feels tears begin to prick the corners of his eyes under his mask. And he can’t even blink them away--these ridiculous expressive lenses in them would betray him to his father.

“Damian,” he father says again, and this time, when Bruce runs his hand through Damian’s hair, Damian lets him. Leans into it, a little. Few comforts are to be gained from a mad brother, and he has missed even this small gesture of affection. He has missed his father.

“You saved me,” says Bruce. “I am proud of you.”

Another brief squeeze of his shoulder and the moment’s over. Batman returns to Wonder Woman and the Kryptonian, and Damian lets out a long breath. Takes a second to blink away the tears.

When he feels steady enough again he rejoins Raven, who slips her fingers through his and draws his hand to her mouth, shyly pressing her dry, chapped lips to the back of his hand. “It’ll be fine,” she says. And maybe half of it is true.

They step through a second portal into the headquarters of the League of Assassins. It is quiet as the grave, and Damian spares a moment to pray for the souls of any servants foolish enough to flee. They’ll need it. Even without Darkseid and his parademons around, the compound is still one of the safest places on the planet.

Only his father joins him down to the cells. “He will be violent,” Damian warns him, even though Batman already knows this. “I don’t know if he will recognize you.”

He hammers on the door, ready for the entire ridiculous process of trying to startle his brother, then wrestle him into submission. “Grayson, it’s me.”

What he hears makes him drop the keys. 

“Damian?”

“D-dick?” he stammers out, forgetting everything; that his father is here, that the world has ended, that he has died. He falls to his knees, grabbing the door like pit madness has seized him too, like he can reach out through the solid wood and iron and hold his brother in his arms.

“Damian,” Dick chants through the crack under the door. “Damian, Damian.”

He’s crying now in earnest, too tired, too relieved to hide it. He’s vaguely aware of Bruce falling to his knees next to him, equally overcome and useless.

“It’s me, Dick,” he cries. “Yes, it’s me.” His father’s arm curls over his shoulder and pulls him close. “And father is here too.”

Such a pathetic family reunion. Such a pathetic family. Yet his heart pounds away in his chest, choking him a little, for once, with the heaviness of hope.

**Author's Note:**

> _That's it, it's split it won't recover_   
>  _Just frame the halves and call them brothers_


End file.
